Background: Profound reduction in antegrade epicardial coronary flow with concomitant ischemia is seen occasionally during percutaneous coronary intervention despite the absence of evident vessel dissection, obstruction, or distal vessel embolic cutoff. In a prior small series of cases, this "no-reflow" phenomenon appeared to be promptly reversed by the intra-coronary administration of verapamil.
Methods and results: To further understand the prevalence of this syndrome and its responsiveness to the proposed therapy, we reviewed 1919 percutaneous interventions performed between January 1991 and April 1993. During the study period, 39 patients (2.0%) met our criteria for no reflow, 37 of whom were treated with intracoronary nitroglycerin followed by intracoronary verapamil and 2 of whom received intracoronary nitroglycerin alone. An additional 16 patients (0.8%) were given verapamil as part of the management of a flow-limiting dissection or distal embolus (mechanical obstruction). Intracoronary verapamil (50 to 900 micrograms, total dose) improved TIMI flow grade in 89% of no-reflow patients and markedly reduced the number of cineframes between contrast injection and opacification of a selected distal landmark (from 91 +/- 56 to 38 +/- 21 frames, P < .001). By contrast, only 19% of patients with epicardial mechanical obstruction showed improvement in TIMI flow grade after verapamil, with minimal reduction in frames to opacification (from 107 +/- 42 to 101 +/- 69, P = .73).
Conclusions: The no-reflow phenomenon--reduction in distal flow without apparent dissection or distal embolization--occurs in 2% of coronary interventions. It generally responds promptly to intracoronary verapamil administration, suggesting that distal microvascular spasm may be its etiology.